The elf looked on in disbelief, his eyes still incredulous as he pondered over the words he had just heard. Russel was the one who broke the slight moment of silence with a slightly jealous expression.

“I won't lie, I am quite jealous, she was level 35 after that first attack, it was probably like an XP bonus stage for her. If I was there, I can confirm I would likely kill only one or two, if that, before getting absolutely annihilated.”

Roxanne gave a light giggle as she gestured towards Munro, her words filled with mirth.

“Russel, I think only Munro here and his men could get anywhere near Aurora’s level of success just based on their combat experience, and even then, they are not used to this sort of fighting unlike her.”

The last of the 3 random players looked at Roxanne with suspicion, his looks that of a human with the exception of his slightly angular ears indicative of a half-elf.

“Wait, I assume Astaria is Aurora right? Are you guys friends IRL? And how can she be used to fighting in Caelus already?”

Tyrell glanced over to Roxanne with an exasperated expression.

“Nirvana, I thought you were supposed to be good at information, surely you should remember gamer 101: don't use people's real names online?”

Roxanne gave a sheepish smile as she glanced over to Tyrell and then the three random guild members.

“Whoopsie, I hope you boys will keep my little slip-up secret, right?”

The faces of the three showed a hint of eagerness seeing Roxanne’s flirtatious tone, causing Munro to give one of his men a shared grim look. Tyrell supposed the look was due to seeing the lack of discipline their new subordinates held, especially when a beautiful fox girl was being flirtatious.

Tyrell subtly rolled his eyes seeing how Roxanne was acting, pulling out his waterskin and taking a sip before answering the half-elf player whose name tag of Kalvaris hovered above his head.

“In answer to your question, yes, yes, and time travel back from after the apocalypse. You should have seen her take on the goblin raid boss, she was practically toying with it.”

Tyrell enjoyed seeing the wide mix of expressions appearing on the faces of his conversation partners, letting his signature amused smirk play on his face as he checked the time.

“Well, I guess it will be a slow night. I’ma log out and head back home, still around Astaria’s at the moment. I’ll be back in 2 hours or so.”

After receiving a few nods and mummers in response, Tyrell navigated the system menu, and after a few moments, vanished from the campfire in a collection of white, smokey wisps that immediately started to disperse.

****

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The next two hours passed quite slowly for Tyrell. He first sat around drinking some posh people tea while waiting for the cabby that would take him home to arrive. Not that he had any complaints about the tea, the stuff was nice, but if given the choice he would prefer a can of lilt.

After a relatively quick cab ride, which was appreciated given how bad the London traffic usually was at this time, he arrived back to his parent's home.

Since he had left uni, he had remained living with his parents. It was both economical and practical since the commute to his new job in central was quite short using the tube, and the rent prices in London were insane, so living at home worked out well. It also helped that he could keep his parents company, his mother was still apprehensive about the day he would eventually be moving out.

And that had come much sooner than she had expected, with Aurora now employing him with a salary currently quadruple what he was earning before, along with future raises, rent prices were now a non-issue, so he hoped to be moving out within the month.

The look on his mother's face when he came in and showed her the signed contract was priceless. Once she had read through the document, she had started screaming in outrage that he had been conned, threatening that if this was some kind of prank she would slap him black and blue with her slipper.

After he had explained everything clearly, she was still sceptical but held a hint of excitement for him that he managed to get a high-paying job doing something he loved.

His mother, upon his return, had asked how his day had gone while serving him some of her usual homemade cuisine. He had given her a particularly neutered version of the tale. The whole story with the rest of the world thinking Chester was dead and had a sister was not something he wanted to get into, and it was clear his mother had not found out yet.

It would only be a matter of time, and he would rather have his own place to escape to when telling his mother about the newfound insanity that had inserted itself into his life. The slippers hurt, goddamnit!

After regaling his mother with the latest interesting tales from his time in Caelus, he had retreated upstairs into the comfort of his own pod and returned to his spot, standing next to the campfire.

The previous group had seemingly split up, with Munro and his people, along with Roxanne and the new guild members having moved on to talk to different groups of players amongst the campsite.

With some time for himself, for a few minutes he just sat down by the fire revelling in what surrounded him. The heat of the fire on his face that sometimes stung his skin when the gentle breeze blew in his direction, the uncomfortable hard wood of his stool underneath him, the sounds of the nearby bug population letting their presence be known.

And more importantly, the light layer of dust covering the lower steel plates on his legs and boots that smudged and clung to his finger, the feeling of each granule present on his fingertip.

Just everything was so realistic.

When he first logged in, everything felt similar to the development in games when the next generation of consoles had been released back in 2013, like going from 1080p to 4k.

The immersive realism was truly mind blowing, at least until their group had first met up and the nature of the game had been brought into question.

He had spared himself some time to speak to the various people around the market as he set about his own business. And that was what had shattered any illusion of the game being normal.

He had spent extra time with a couple of the locals who seemed more inclined to talk about themselves, trying to discern any holes in their stories. He felt more like the local feds than some god sent warrior here to do god knows what. But what else could he do? Just accept whatever was thrown at him without checking things himself?

He ain’t no blind fool.

But as he sat, he focused on the noise of the bugs, trying to discern any patterns to the distinct noise of a bug that sounded like a cricket on helium. And he had no luck. None at all.

And that meant that if this was just a game, either their pods or headsets, or the servers themselves would need to process the data for what was likely thousands of bugs around him, along with all of the players and their placed possessions, and what was probably hundreds of miles of terrain around them.

There was no way their headsets were able to do that in the detail he could see, and it would be a very far stretch for the pods, and for this to be all done server side and have the data sent through the network, there would at the very least be some latency, frame drops or freezing, but there was absolutely nothing.

And it was revisiting this realisation that helped him once again reaffirm the fact that Aurora had been gender swapped, that Caelus was another world, that she could now just create ice to put in the rum and coke she poured last night without having to get up and go to an ice bucket.

Yeah, he had decided. He was going to learn some magic from Aurora, after seeing how casually she had been using it to do small things, lighting a joint, getting a bottle out of reach to fly into her hand, and making ice, there was no way he wasn’t going to learn that sort of thing now.

And maybe, with the slightest possibility, he would no longer have a need for lighters that people would steal within 5 minutes of its first use.

God bless.

But for now, he was feeling a little restless, so he stood up to look around the camp for anyone who might be interested in a light bit of sparring. After all, Aurora had told them all to practice whenever the opportunity arose, and a casual dance by the fire with hammers and swords would not hurt.